


Asleep now, and silent

by TourmalineGreen



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Morning Boners, Dominant Ben Solo, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff and Smut, I'm so sorry, Maybe a Little Too Much HanLeia, Meta Fic References, Mutual Pining, Praise Kink, Snowed In, Solo Play (in every sense of the word), There was only one bed!, Winter storm warning, canon age gap, hanleia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-30 20:30:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17230709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TourmalineGreen/pseuds/TourmalineGreen
Summary: Rey Nolan takes Intro to Automotive Repair course at Coruscant Community College from Han Solo, intending to learn how to fix cars, and gains a pair of surrogate parents instead. Only trouble is, Han and Leia's son, Ben, is as hot as he is infuriating. And he makes her feel so uncomfortable, makes her want things she cant entirely put into words. But he always seems so cold to her, so rude. It's clear as day what he thinks of her, and it isn't favorable, so her crush simmers in silence.When the Organa-Solos invite Rey up for a winter getaway to their family's cabin, she doesn't realize Ben is coming, too. What's worse than having to spend six hours in a car with your crush, who hates you? Getting snowed in with him, that's what.





	Asleep now, and silent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monsterleadmehome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterleadmehome/gifts).



> Title from the poem White-Eyes, by Mary Oliver. 
> 
> Monsterleadmehome, you requested:  
> \+ Snowed-in winter storm where Rey and Ben have to work through issues and find something to do to pass the time...  
> \+ Dominant Ben Solo in the bedroom, equal everywhere else...  
> \+ Holiday spent with Ben's dysfunctional family, with angst and fluff and humor... 
> 
> And I hope this fits the bill! Enjoy! <3
> 
> Monumental thanks to [voicedimplosives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives), [destinies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinies/pseuds/destinies), and [oscillateswildly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscillateswildly/pseuds/oscillateswildly) for their wonderful beta-reading and support.

Rey Nolan is up to her elbows in the engine of a 1974 Mustang the first time she meets Ben Solo.

Hanging out in Han’s garage, Rey never anticipates that her former instructor, now mentor and friend, has a son at all—let alone a towering, dark-eyed, dark-haired, brick shithouse of a son, who shows up one day out of nowhere, just to glower down at her and demand to know why the hell she’s working on his father’s car. He’s wearing a rumpled plaid shirt and a denim jacket that’s seen better days, a bit of stubble on his chin, a pair of aviators. There’s a bag slung over his shoulder, one large hand clutching the strap to steady it.

Rey remembers that moment in shapes and pieces. Turning to face him, clinging to the old spark plug in her hands, stuttering something of a reply—but the rest is a blur across her senses. It’s a warm day, right on the knife-edge of late summer, with the promise of Fall just around the corner; the garage door is up, and the slight breeze, spiced faintly with the scent of his cologne, plays with the edges of his collar-length hair. Cedar and spice; Rey remembers his scent the way she remembers his voice, the way his possessive gaze makes her body respond and come alive, even before her mind can form coherent thoughts. Classic rock—Han’s choice—is playing on the radio, and there’s this wall of man before her, and she doesn’t know what to do, or say, or think.

Love hits her out of nowhere like a porn star’s dick slapping the face of a girl named Candy Bliss—inconvenient, and vaguely startling. Rey isn’t ready at all.

Then Han calls out from his office, in the back: “Ben, quit flirting and come on through.”

And the man—Ben—scowls, then complies. With one last glance at her ragged, navy-blue coveralls, he stomps back to his father’s office. Rey is left standing in his wake.

This is how she meets Ben Solo.  

It is in that moment that fate reaches out, wraps its greedy hands around her, and draws her close. It is in this moment that a fierce and unshakable crush whispers a desperate, hopeless need in her ear: _You want him,_ it says. **_Him_ ** _, and nobody else._

Shit.

Ben Solo stays for dinner that night, and when he sits down at the refinished oak table in Han’s dining room, Rey can hardly look at him, for fear that she’s going to blurt out something embarrassing and needy. Something like, _Please pass the potatoes, and also would you be so kind as to bend me over the table and call me your good girl?_

Things like that.

Hypothetically.

Instead, she keeps quiet, and lets the two men—father and son, and she can see the resemblance, now—bicker instead. In between bites of meatloaf and mashed potatoes and roasted carrots, she takes stock of Ben: Dark eyes, amber-brown, with dark, slanting brows; the mixture of his features—strong nose, lean face, full mouth…

He’s attractive, and his voice is unholy, and he’s got to be ten years older than her and _Jesus Christ can he just break her spine in seven places and put an end to her misery already?_

“Rey, here, she’s been taking my class, down at the community college.”

“Oh,” Ben says, his eyes narrowing a little as he surveys her. “That explains it.”

“Explains what?” Rey says, coming back to her senses, suddenly suspecting that she’s missing huge swaths of the conversation because she’s got a ladyboner that just won’t quit.

“You did seem a bit young for him,” Ben says, tilting his head up a little, looking down his nose at her.

“She’s a _student—_ ” Han starts to say, but Rey shouts across him:

“How _dare_ you!”

Rey has her hands around her water glass and is prepared to throw it—always did have a bit of a temper on her—but Ben puts his hands up in front of him, apologizing hastily.

This, too, is how she meets Ben Solo.

And oh, isn’t it alarming and shameful for her to admit that even after that thunderously excellent first encounter, Rey’s crush on him never really goes away? It just lingers, like a bad dent in the body of a classic car. And every time she sees him—dinners at Han’s, and eventually, dinners at Leia’s, when the off-again, on-again couple are back on-again—the dueling feelings emerge as fresh as that very first moment.

When she’d first taken the Intro to Automotive Repair course at Coruscant Community College, Rey had only intended to learn what was on the syllabus. Instead, she’d gained a mentor and almost-father figure, and, in time, a kind, intelligent, and absolutely forceful almost-mother figure, in Leia Organa-Solo, Han’s _we-haven’t-gotten-around-to-finalizing-the-divorce-yet_ sort of ex-wife, who teaches grad-level PolySci classes at Aldera University. She doesn’t really like to think about Ben, if she can at all avoid it, because she knows his absence and distance upsets them; they wish—frequently, and within her hearing—that he would just come home, settle down, marry a nice girl and make lots of babies for them to dote on.

Granted, the first wish—coming home—is much more Han, and the latter ones much more Leia, but the point still stands.

They miss him.

Rey can’t entirely blame them. To her, their meddlesome, smothering, well-intentioned love is kind of sweet. She knows what it’s like on the other side of the fence, wishing for a family. The idea that these lovely people can be right here waiting for him, and he keeps going off in the world and doing who knows what… Rey wants him, but she also hates him a little for it. Doesn’t he know how good things could be?

Things stay relatively consistent for two and a half years. Rey comes over for dinner once or twice a week, Han lets her wrench on his car, Leia forcibly takes her shopping. Ben shows up every four months or so, argues with his parents most of the way through dinner, and doesn’t call for a few weeks. It’s a cycle to which they all grow accustomed. He always manages to strut back into her life when she’s finally convinced herself that her attraction to him has diminished back down to manageable levels… and then his appearance reminds her that, no, no it hasn’t.

Not in the slightest. But she can manage it.

Everything is great.

And then, winter vacation happens.

* * *

Rey doesn’t know that Ben has even been invited to the trip, let alone that he is going, until he shows up at Leia’s townhome with a black duffel bag in hand. His parents are delighted, of course, but Rey is somewhere between less than enthused and erotically mortified that she’s going to have to spend not just the six-hour ride in the back of Leia’s SUV with Ben, but a week in a cabin in some remote part of the Chandrilan National Forest with him, too.

“It has three bedrooms,” Han assures them, from the passenger seat. “Leia, you’re riding that man’s bumper, it’s gonna—”

“I know how to drive in the snow, thank you very much,” Leia bites back, affectionately. “It was my mother’s place, the cabin, and it’s been kept up beautifully. Surrounded by trees—very picturesque… and there’s power and hot water, so you won’t have to rough it.”

“I don’t mind roughing it, Mom,” Ben says, with the sullen sincerity of a twelve-year-old boy in a thirty-year-old man’s body. “In Tanzania, we—”

And then he launches into a short and rather pretentious-sounding TED talk on his work in Tanzania. Rey tries not to roll her eyes. Ben, a photojournalist, is somewhat well-known by his moniker, Kylo Ren, for his work photographing war-torn regions, punishing and highly dangerous environments. His last photo essay had been about malnourished orphans; Rey could hardly read it or look at it, despite the fact that his work is beautiful. How can he just take photos of those poor children, and not take them into his arms? Rey doesn’t—won’t ever understand.

He would be easier to hate, Rey thinks, if he were fully committed to being an asshole jerkface, twenty-four seven. Instead, he’s a handsome, impartially-humanitarian, sometimes asshole jerkface. That makes it worse.

Rey dozes against the cold window for a while, and jolts awake, a bit disoriented, when the SUV finally pulls to a stop.

“Here we are!” Leia says, cheerfully.

And Rey looks out, wincing a little at the motion-detecting floodlights, trying to discern the outline of the house… cabin… whatever. It is rather traditional looking, from what Rey can make out of the shape by the floodlights. A wide front porch, a front door with a window on either side, stairs leading up—the rest of it is swallowed up by the pitch-black night already fallen around them in the forest.

They get out of the SUV, and Rey goes around to the back to get her bag—but Ben, of course, is already there.

“That’s mine,” she says, and he glares down at her, hoisting her cheery fruit-print bag over his shoulder along with his somber, practical, edgelord-black one.

“I know,” he says—and proceeds to walk right past her, up to the cabin.

Rey follows, increasing her speed to match his loping, long-legged pace.

“You don’t have to do this to make a point,” Rey says, hotly.

“I’m not,” Ben replies. “I’m just carrying your bag, is that a crime now?”

“No, it’s not a crime, it’s just—”

But they’ve caught up with Han and Leia, and Rey falls silent when it becomes apparent that the on-again, off-again couple is _extremely_ back on-again, to such a degree that Leia can hardly get the key in the lock, due to Han’s wandering hands.

“Give it a break, you two,” Ben grumbles, and for once, Rey has to agree with him. “Nobody wants to see that…”

“I’ll have you know that the night you were conceived—”

“Okay!” Rey exclaims, loudly and cheerfully, when the front door to the cabin is finally opened. “Let’s all get inside, isn’t it quite chilly out tonight?”

Han, mercifully, stops his recounting of Ben’s conception, and the pair of them take a rather sprightly path right down the center of the cabin and over to what must be a staircase. Rey glances up at Ben just as she hears his father’s laugh and his mother’s delighted squeal, and she knows it’s not just the cold, crisp air that’s making their cheeks flush red.

Ben averts his gaze quickly. He swings around to shut the door behind them, very nearly knocking a little ceramic bear with a red and black plaid trapper hat off of a shelf near the door.

“Let’s…” he starts to say, then clears his throat, glancing back at Rey. “I’m just gonna…”

“Sure,” Rey says.

Neither of them want to even consider the possibility that his parents are getting freaky in an upstairs bedroom. They both sit down on the bench by the door and tug at the laces of their boots—Rey’s burgundy Docs, Ben’s black, fur-trimmed, proper winter hiking boots—and Ben tucks his under the bench, on the rack, first. He takes his bag, and heads to the back of the cabin.

Rey, who doesn’t really want to spend any more time near him, heads to the opposite side of the cabin, fully taking in the layout of the place.

The cabin walls are a pale blonde wood, old but not rundown in the slightest. To the left of the front door is a living room, with a massive stone fireplace set in the middle of the wall, and a cozy-looking couch and pair of overstuffed chairs. There’s a half-high bookcase all along one wall, which draws Rey’s attention immediately, and a rug, and coffee table, and a metal rack-like thing for holding split logs and kindling, rolled-up newspapers and a tube of long matches.

Rey makes a circuit around the room in her stocking feet, looking out through the windows and seeing nothing but the vague shapes of the trees. She ends over by the bookshelf, and crouches down to get a closer look. Slowly, she runs her finger along the dusty spines of the paperbacks, smirking slightly when she sees that they all appear to be exceptionally vintage-looking romance novels. She skims the titles— _Lakeside Lover;_ _The Emperor’s Warrior Bride; Legally Wedded, Legally Bedded; The Were-Shifter’s Selkie Lover_. Occasionally, Rey pulls one out a little to look at the cover art. _Claimed by the Imperator_ boasts an impressively wide man on a throne of black stone, with a trembling, ivory- and lace-clad woman draped across his lap and a goblet of what looks like green wine in his gloved right hand, while _Southern Charm, Missing Arm_ appears to have a scruffy-looking, plaid-wearing bartender smiling shyly at a woman in daisy dukes. Rey puts those two back, and keeps reading, because this is just too much fun. _Code Red: Protect and Defend her Heart_ has a serious-looking special-ops agent and a frightened woman clinging to him, while _Siberian Nights_ has a snowy forest and the bare back of a muscular, tattooed man wearing red tracksuit pants…

Finally, Rey chooses one of them, and pulls it out. The silver-embossed cover reads _Her Darkest Desire_ , and Rey gazes at the cover with amusement. A warrior, wearing leather fantasy garb, stands with his hand on the hilt of his sword, while a woman in a pale green gown—the kind of impractical, long-sleeved, fantasy-maiden gown that seems rather useless in an actual fight—stands opposite, her own dagger in her hand. The cover copy reads: ‘She was his greatest desire… He was her sworn enemy… Can two hearts find peace on the field of war?’

“Odds are, yes,” Rey mutters to herself, flipping it over to read the back and standing back up. “Because that’s how these books work…”

>   _‘He was called the Hand of Death—The Sworn Swordsman and High Executor to the Grand Sorcerer of the Etrothen Empire, fiercest warrior, He of the Bloody Blade. Lord Korlan Renard had never set foot onto the field of battle without finding victory—but he was soon to discover that there were some battles where might does not lead to triumph. Lord Korlan had fought for his ideals, and for glory.... But in the fiercest battlefield of all, was he willing to fight for his heart? The moment he set his eyes on Sister Éliane Whiteheart, he knew he had to have the fair young woman for his own. She, too, longed to be swept into the arms of passion with the man who had rescued her—but her vows were for God, and not for men… no matter how much her heart’s yearning begged not to be denied! Would the Hand of Death be worthy to welcome a chaste maiden’s love? Or would the darkness come and claim them both?’_

“Oh boy,” Rey says. She pads over to one of the overstuffed floral armchairs and flops down. How can she resist such temptation? With her coat still on, Rey can ignore the chill in the cabin for a little longer. She draws her feet up, opens the book, breathes in the smell of musty old well-loved paperback, and starts to read.

* * *

“We’ve got a problem,” Ben says, his voice snapping her out of her amusement with the book halfway through the second chapter.

Rey looks up. Whatever he has to say better be more important than Sister Éliane’s musings on her own pensive, yet uncommonly pretty reflection.

Ben, who has changed out of his coat and winter gear and now is sporting a rather soft-looking deep gray waffle-weave henley shirt and a pair of black jeans, is standing before her, his hands on his hips. Rey notices that despite his emo outfit and rather dour expression, he’s wearing bright red wool socks. Festive.

“What?”

“There’s only one bedroom downstairs.”

Rey blinks at him. “So there’s two upstairs, then?”

Ben gives her a look that plainly says: ‘Do _you_ want to go upstairs while my parents are going at it?’

Rey sighs. She tucks a finger into the book to hold her spot, and glances up. The way the cabin is situated, this living area has a vaulted ceiling, and the other half of the first floor, which houses the kitchen, dining, and bedroom, is topped with a very narrow loft-like space. That must be where the stairs come up... Both of them do the mental calculations, and Rey knows when she looks back at him that both of them have come to the same conclusion.

There’s really only enough room for one upstairs bedroom—assuming it has a bathroom, too.

“I’ll take the couch,” Rey says.

“You’re not taking the couch,” Ben counters. “You’re our guest, you—”

“And you’re their child.”

Ben’s scowl deepens. “Yeah, but they actually like having _you_ around…”

“They like having—Look, we’ll settle this like adults.”

At this, Rey takes one of the coasters from the side table, tucking it in as a bookmark and setting _Her Darkest Desire_ down so her hands are free. Ben looks confused for a second, then a smirk crosses his face when he looks down to see her right hand, curled into a fist, set atop the flat palm of her left.

“Rock-paper-scissors?”

“You got a better idea?” Rey says. “I’m not arm-wrestling you.”

“Yeah, _you_ take the bedroom, and _I’ll_ take the couch.”

“It’s barely long enough for you!”

“Fine,” he says, and lifts up his own hand to mirror hers. “Whatever.”

Rey narrows her eyes, ready for the duel.

She counts down, three, two, one; Ben bounces his fist on his palm, gaze steely and determined.

His Scissors are no match for her Rock.

“Ha!” Rey says. “I win.”

“So you did,” Ben says. “So, you get the bedroom.”

“No, I win, so _I get to choose_ ,” Rey says. “And I choose the couch.”

Ben lets out a noise that’s somewhere between a groan and a growl, and throws his hands up in frustration. “Fine, sleep on the fucking couch, why do I even bother trying to do something nice for you—”

“Something nice for me would be letting me sleep where I want without having to—”

“Ah, come on,” Han’s voice, from the stairs, makes them both shut up. “You two are starting to sound like me and your mom, kid.”

This is, unequivocally, the worst thing to say. Ben flushes out to the tips of his ears and stalks off to the back bedroom— _his bedroom,_ Rey thinks, with a violent sort of triumph. And Rey looks up at Han, who is watching the whole scene with a note of amused incredulity.

Upstairs, Rey hears what sounds like the shower turn on—or a bathtub being filled.

“Let’s make dinner,” Rey says—because food solves everything, and she can work off some of the nervous energy inside of her. Nervous energy which always seems to bubble up in the most absurd and fractious ways, whenever Ben Solo is around. It’s like he draws it out of her, makes her feel like she has to fight for ground, fight to assert herself. She doesn’t really understand why. And right now, she decides, isn’t the time to question it.

* * *

When Leia comes back down, however—her gray hair damp and and braided over one shoulder, wearing a soft white sweater and a pair of comfortable lounge pants covered with gingerbread people in various types of icing lingerie—she is immediately on alert and not at all pleased about Rey’s plan to sleep on the couch.

Over a mountain of spaghetti and meatballs, and with Ben still doing who knows what in his bedroom, Leia and Han do their best to convince Rey to change her mind—but there’s really no nice way to say _‘If Han and Ben share a room, one of them will literally wake up murdered, and it won’t be Ben, and also, I don’t want to share a room with you, Leia, even though you are a very nice person, because you just had sex in that bed and I’m not prepared to think about old people sex this close to Christmas, thanks and pass the marinara.’_ So she smiles, and tells them it’s fine, and when Ben finally does emerge, he does the strangest thing he’s done all trip.

He backs her up.

“Mom, drop it,” Ben says, taking two slices of garlic bread and placing them on his plate. “Let her sleep where she wants.”

Rey feels an odd response rise up inside of her—a grudging sense of gratitude, perhaps. Maybe even a little thrill, hearing that air of command. She can’t explain it.

Fuck, why does he do things to her, after all this time? She really, really needs to get a grip.

* * *

After everyone has eaten their fill, Ben gets up to clear the plates and start washing up. Leia leans over and pours the last of their second bottle of red wine into Rey’s glass with a wink.

“Thank you,” Rey says.

“It’s Christmas, it’s a time to be festive.”

Rey grins, and lifts her glass in a little salute of cheers. “I am about to feel quite a bit more festive after this.”

Han follows his son to the kitchen, carrying what little remains of the marinara and meatballs; the noodles are long gone, but the rest, Rey supposes, will store nicely in the fridge. Predictably, it doesn’t take two minutes (Rey counts) before Han and Ben are bickering about which size of container to put the leftovers in. Rey tries not to roll her eyes.

Leia stands up, and Rey takes this as her cue. She follows Leia into the living room.

“Your mother was quite a reader,” Rey says, gesturing to the bookshelf.

Leia laughs once. “Yes, she was. And a romantic, too. It doesn’t really fit the senatorial image, reading these things, but… she loved them. Kept them hidden away, like so much of her life… She was in love with love, I think.”

“Hmm.” Rey doesn’t know what else to say about that. She had learned only bits and pieces to supplement what had come up in her general education courses—how Padme Amidala Naberrie had become the youngest state senator in history, how she’d fallen in love and eloped with a former soldier, how she’d fallen pregnant virtually straight away and how the complications had claimed her life in the end… perhaps there was a similar shade of bittersweetness to Leia’s yearning for her own parents, something to which Rey can relate. Wanting to save them, keep their things precisely as they once were. The impossibility of preserving memories in amber.

Rey can understand that.

She goes to the hearth, puts a few more logs on the fire to warm the room up, and Leia finds a fleece throw and a book of her own—what looks to be one of the political thrillers.

Content with her somewhat haphazard log-handling skills, Rey returns to the chair which she’s been thinking of as hers, and picks up her book. Within moments, the world dissolves, and she’s back in the story…

  

> _Lord Korlan trudged through the treacherous underbrush, thorns and vines reaching out as if to drag him deeper into the Umberdark Woods by his very cloak. This had been the way of it from the start—the dark had always reached out for him, and he had, for a time, fought its eternal pull. But now, he was a man grown, and past such childhood follies. The dark was powerful, much more so than the weak and fading light._
> 
> _It was into the dark he pulled as he walked. Although he had removed the three crossbow bolts he had taken to the chest and thigh, the wounds still threatened to slow him down, and hot blood flowed down behind his leather armor as he walked. The dark could only staunch his wounds; he could not heal them, and could not journey much farther in these damnable woods._
> 
> _As powerful as he was, as fearsome as he was on the field of battle, even Lord Korlan could not deny that he was in urgent need of a medic._
> 
> _He stumbled, and the proud warrior cursed, damning the light and the dark. Would that he had been born a free man! Not one born to a noble house, given in fosterage to train him up in body and in mind. Would that the war had never come to his doorstep—or that his family had not abandoned him—_
> 
> _Lord Korlan stumbled once more, and this time, the binding he had applied to his leg wound slipped, the rags red with his blood, smearing up the thigh-plate of his cured leather armor._
> 
> _A snap of branches to his side—his sword-arm moved nearly of its own volition, and he drew his bittersteel blade, steading himself against the fierce bite of pain that now coursed through his limbs._
> 
> _A woman._
> 
> _No—a novice. He could see her pale, frightened visage through the opening of her roughspun habit. Her mouth, parted in a soft, soundless scream, was the color of summer roses. What an ill contrast for a novice, Lord Korlan thought, as he sunk to his knees in agony. Still, though, he kept his blade in his gloved hands._
> 
> _“Sir…” the novice said, tugging on the edge of her long white robes, delicately untangling them from the thorns which had pulled and shredded his own cloak’s edge. “You are… injured…”_
> 
> _“Well-spotted,” Lord Korlan ground out—but the sound was distorted by his helm, and his only response in the novice was a widening of her soft brown eyes._
> 
> _He was going to die out here. If the novice had any sense in her head whatsoever, she would spot him for what he was—a monster. An abomination. A scourge upon the people she had likely taken vows to heal and defend. The edges of the darkness teased at the borders of his vision, and, in defiance of nature and death itself, Lord Korlan tightened his grip on his sword. He had vowed to die on the field of battle, but he always had been a disappointment—_

“We found some extra pillows upstairs for you,” Han says—and Rey looks up to see him there, holding two pillows in mismatched pillowcases. “And Ben’s looking for the extra blankets. You sure about this?”

“Yes,” Rey says. “Absolutely. I’m sure I’ll be perfectly comfortable here.”

She glances over at the sofa; Rey had been so engrossed by her book, she hadn’t noticed that Leia had gone upstairs already. Typically somewhat of a night owl herself, Rey was glad that she didn’t have to pretend to go to sleep with someone else who might keep an earlier schedule…

Han sets the pillows down on the couch, and stands back, looking around the room. “Haven’t been up to this place in… oh, I can’t even say how long. Ben was just a kid, then.”

Rey, who has attempted to form a picture of Child-Ben in her mind for years, tucks the coaster back in the book and sets it down, trading it for her wine glass.”Has he always been this serious?”

“Oh yeah,” Han says, sitting down with a bit of a creak and a thump into the other overstuffed chair. “He was an intense kid. Didn’t sleep well for about a year and a half—you know, there’s a reason why he’s an only child—”

“Dad, _please_ ,” Ben says, coming out from the back room with a pair of quilts folded in his arms. “Rey doesn’t—”

“I think Rey does, actually,” Rey says, taking a sip of her wine and leaning back in her chair to get more comfortable. Her gaze switches from challenging Ben to earnest, looking in Han’s eyes. “Do you have any naked baby pictures?”

Han smiles, and pats his chest pocket, and his jeans, looking for his phone. “I think I do have something… anyway, Leia loaded some on this thing, I haven’t quite figure it all out yet…”

Ben casts Rey a glare as he sets the blankets down onto the couch, sitting down beside them—staying, she assumes, so that he can censor any crazy photos his father comes up with. But Han just frowns, and prods at the phone.

“Can’t get any signal—”

“Well of course you can’t get signal up here,” Ben retorts. “We’re miles away—”

“Anyway, I’ll show you, once we’re back in civilization,” Han says, rolling his eyes at his son. “There’s one with him on a bear-skin rug…”

Ben just stands up and stomps off—or as best one can stomp while wearing red fuzzy socks.

Han watches him go, and then turns back to Rey, making a sort of ‘what can you do?’ expression. Rey smiles, but… it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. And when Han gets back up from the chair, and Rey drinks the remainder of her wine, she wonders… if they really _did_ want Ben to come home, and stay, and stop making things so damn tense all the time, doesn’t it, perhaps, take two to make a thing go right? They could try a little harder to not antagonize hm.

Who knows.

With Han and Leia upstairs, and Ben hiding yet again in his room, Rey gets to making her bed for the night. She sets out the quilts, one on top of the other, and—after a brief internal debate about whether she should put her head or her feet closer to the fire—puts the pillows down on the end closer to the fire. She picks up her book, intending to do a bit more reading before bed, and then curses quietly when the coaster falls out.

“You alright?”

Rey spins around too fast, stubbing her toe on the foot of the chair and cursing even louder this time, facing Ben down—or, rather, facing him _up_.

“Shit, yes—” Rey says, wincing as her toe throbs in protest when she tries to put some weight on it. “Someone should put a fucking bell on you…”

“Sorry,” he says, mouth working as if there’s more he wants to say, but won’t. He holds out her bag. “Here.”

“What were you doing with my bag?”

“Nothing,” comes his exasperated reply. “I just… I had both mine and yours, and when we came in I… you know what, forget it.”

He starts to turn, and Rey reaches out, catching him by his sleeve.

“Ben—wait.”

 _It takes two,_ she thinks.

“What.”

The flat, resigned way he says the word just about breaks her heart. Her foot is throbbing, but the pain, she thinks, maybe she deserves, just a little. Maybe it grounds her, makes the sight of his handsome face a little less exasperating.

He turns back to look at her.

“Thank you,” she says, softly.

Ben’s eyes bore into hers as they stand there. All at once, she’s taken back to that first moment—the scent of him, his nearness, the way his presence seems to fill her everywhere but the one place she wants him to be. She takes a breath, and oh, that just makes it all worse. There’s no way to tell if the look in his eyes is kindness or cruelty, no way to discern what it is that makes her let him stand so close to her, when she doesn’t ever let men get close like this—not even ones she likes.

Does she like him? Is it something else?

Rey doesn’t know anymore.

And—is it her imagination, or do his eyes dart down to her mouth?

Ben clears his throat, and looks away, over to the black windows. “You can come in and use the bathroom, if you need to… to get ready for bed, I mean.”

“Okay,” Rey says, a little breathless. What an idiot she is. She swallows, and nods. “Sure.”

* * *

Ben wanders around the kitchen for a while, giving Rey her privacy while she digs her kit out of her bag and heads to the back bedroom. The bathroom is accessed through the bedroom, and so Rey has to walk past the Queen-sized bed and _not_ think about Ben sleeping in it tonight, and walk past the green and black plaid flannel pajama pants and _not_ think about Ben wearing them tonight, and go into the bathroom and _not_ think about Ben using the razor, soap, and washcloth he’s set out…

Rey decides to take a shower, just because she can.

As the water runs and heats up, she’s dismayed to see that, contrary to what his silken mane promises, all Ben’s brought with him is a bar of some kind of minty soap, so she pulls out her own hotel-sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner and gets in, sighing under the hot stream and pulling the shower curtain across the tub/shower combo. It, like so many other bits of ephemera in this place, is both bear-themed and a pun. Two bears embracing, across a cheery buffalo check background, with the words ‘Love You Bear-y Much!’ make Rey roll her eyes and smile faintly.

Ben’s grandmother must’ve been a really interesting person.

The hot water feels nice though. Rey washes her hair and conditions it, and uses just a little bit of his minty soap, just a little, because it’s not a crime to want to smell like him when she goes to sleep tonight, is it? Rey eyes the detachable shower head, fiddles with the settings and gets a bit of a jolt of surprise when one of the settings—a pulsing, massaging, rather intense spray—fills her with even more dirty thoughts.

 _Not now,_ she thinks, switching it back to normal spray. _Not when the water’s likely rationed and stored in a tank…_

Rey does one final rinse-off, and shuts off the water. She draws back the shower curtain, half-hoping—blame that second glass of wine, maybe—that Ben will just open the door and walk in on her. With one off the stack of light brown towels on the nearby wooden towel shelf, Rey dries her hair thoroughly, and then, halfway through hanging it up on the rack, realizes that she’d been in such a rush, she’d forgotten to bring in her clean pajamas. So it’s either put on her dirty clothes and retain some dignity or… parade out in front of Ben, who is presumably still in the kitchen, in a towel.

She looks down at the towel. It’s a huge one, more like a bath sheet than a towel; she can risk it.

Rey wraps it securely around her body, picks up her bundle of dirty clothes and hairbrush, and opens the bathroom door.

She does not expect to run face-first into Ben Solo’s chest.

“Hey, I found—”

“Sorry, I—”

“—another blanket for you,” Ben finishes, hastily turning away from her, giving Rey a view of his dark hair and a faint flush across the back of his neck. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Rey hastily says, holding the bundle to her chest and regretting everything. “I didn’t expect… I thought you’d still be in the kitchen.”

Ben makes a noncommittal noise and chances a look back at her.

“I left the blanket on the couch,” Ben says, quietly. “For you.”

“Thank you.”

Another beat. Silence, and the wind outside, and the faint tapping of the pipes as the hot water settles back down in the tank. Rey should really go.

“You should take the bed,” Ben says, turning back around to face her, keeping his gaze resolutely above her neck, and no further.

And she laughs, and shakes her head. “Ben, it’s fine. My first apartment, my bed was a futon mattress I found beside a dumpster. I’ll survive.”

But he scowls at this. “Maybe that’s why you should take the bed… someone who’s had to sleep on—”

“I don’t need you to take care of me, alright?” The soft words hit him like a slap from a silk glove. “Sorry, I’m just tired. I’m going to sleep. Thank you for the blanket.”

Ben doesn’t say a word as she leaves. But she does hear it, the hesitation in the way he shuts the door behind her.

Rey doesn’t know why his concern frustrates her. All her life, she’s had to take care of herself—find her own food and shelter, make her own way. It’s been rough, and tumultuous, and uncertain. And now, here she is, under the wing of a borrowed family, keenly aware that every benefit she receives from them, every scrap of attention and affection, is rightfully due to Ben. She doesn’t know why his concern strikes her as… some sort of back-handed compliment. Like he thinks she can’t do it on her own—whatever _it_ is. Survive one night on a couch, when she’d been lucky to have a crib-size mattress on the floor to sleep on, well past her eighth birthday.  

Compared to that, the couch is luxurious.

She doesn’t dare complain, and she doesn’t dare accept his charity. His parents’ is almost too much. If she breaks, if she lets him in, then he’ll know. Then she’ll have to tell him.

And she doesn’t want that.

Because… then things would be… complicated. And this dynamic, it’s awful, but at least it’s familiar.

Rey isn’t tired at all.

But there’s nothing else to do, so she grabs her book, and gets into bed, and decides to read until she’s sleepy.

It’s simple enough to find her place once more. The story picks up, and once again, she’s swept away—

  

> _—this was no torturer’s cell, Lord Korlan thought. Granted, he was flat on his back, on a bed that was nearly as hard and unyielding as stone, and there was a low quality to the lamplight which spoke of inferior tallow, as opposed to the finer candles of his own estate, or mage-light itself… and there was another scent, soft honey and flowers, something both feminine and wild._
> 
> _Torture, he thought, could take many forms._
> 
> _The novice stepped into the circle of light, carrying a low, shallow bowl and a roll of clean linen bandages. He watched her as she set the steaming bowl down, catching her unawares as he examined her youthful face. She was a comely lass, far too pretty to be cloistered away and bound by vows.  Lord Korlan felt a stirring in his loins, despite the echo of pain in his body—_
> 
> _Pain._
> 
> _There… was no pain?_
> 
> _Lord Korlan moved as if to sit up from his bed, but his body would not comply. And the novice, with her keen eyes as green and fresh as grass, caught sight of his struggle, fixing him with her gaze, which was clear and unafraid._
> 
> _“You should not struggle,” she said, in a soft voice as gentle as a rolling brook in the meadow. “You are not yet healed.”_
> 
> _The Dread Knight scoffed, and continued to resist the invisible blanket which weighed him down; perhaps she had dosed him with Poppy’s Bliss, or some other vile herbal tonic, to keep him at her mercy?_
> 
> _“You cannot heal me with… warm water and rags, foolish chit,” he growled._
> 
> _The novice seemed surprised and almost amused by his wrath; the edges of her lips curled into a faint smile._
> 
> _“You are correct.”_
> 
> _“So why—”_
> 
> _All at once, the realization hit him: The bindings, the restraint—it was all coming from her, the novice. Lord Korlan relaxed ever so slightly and allowed his own senses to reach out, testing the edges of his own awareness. And there, like testing the edge of a loose bit of bark with his fingertips, he found the edges of her magic. Faint, soft gold her magic was, now that he had eyes to see it; she had bound him, wrist and body and ankle, and laid a gentle steady blanket of pressure down upon his form. It was woven through with subtlety, natural and inborn, for she clearly had not been trained—not out here._
> 
> _What a waste it was, binding her life to the study of the healing arts. She was powerful, truly powerful. By his side, the two of them could—_
> 
> _“I will have to remove your armor,” the novice said softly, her lashes lowered. “I had hoped to do it as you slept, but…”_
> 
> _“Couldn’t wait to get your hands on me?” Lord Korlan taunted roughly, enjoying the flash of fire in her eyes. “Must be quite a trial, living up to those vows.”_
> 
> _“My vows are between me and my God, Sir,” she retorted, pulling a little dagger from the sheath which was tied to her simple rope belt. “I have no ill intent upon your person.”_
> 
> _“It is not ill intent I promise, novice,” Lord Korlan grinned. “You might even enjoy it.”_
> 
> _Without another word, she set to work with her little dagger, making quick work of his armor and the clothing beneath it. Lord Korlan did feel a momentary distress as she worked—not only that she might see his manhood, and be frightened of it, virgin that she surely was, but that he should be so bared to her, scarred form all the more frightening._
> 
> _Doubtless she was soft and untried, and he was…_
> 
> _Well, she would soon discover, and look her fill, and there was nothing he could do about it. If he had been at full strength, not weakened, he could’ve easily fought against her bonds. But she was not only holding him still, she was doing something with her magic to soothe and lessen his pain. He grudgingly granted that she was skilled at her tasks, no matter how young and untried she may be._
> 
> _She made quick work of his doublet, slicing away at the lacings which held the sleeves to the body and tugging them off; his gloves had already been discarded. The rest of it, she had to use her magic to lift and roll him, somehow keeping him still immobilized, and averting her gaze in a way that was both demure and maddening. Chest bared to her, she attended to his wounds—_

Rey reads on as the yet-unnamed novice—which has got to be something like a nun, right? Except somehow with… magic?—tends to the injured warrior’s wounds. When it gets to the part where the novice is cutting away his smallclothes, Rey very quickly deduces that this is the fantasy-historical-whatever word for underwear, and then her brain immediately replaces whatever it is that this Lord Korlan is supposed to look like with Ben.

Ben, laying there on a bed, lit by flickering firelight… injured, in need of her aid… in possession of a—she looks back down at the page, re-reading the line—a _‘turgid manhood, rapidly lengthening and thickening in response to her nearness and her gentle touch.’_

 _Turgid,_ Rey thinks, scoffing quietly as she nestles down lower in her blankets. _That’s such a stupid word._

Except now she’s thinking about Ben’s turgid manhood, and she just can’t stop thinking about it. Much as he annoys her, she hasn’t ever considered hunting him down in the forest and shooting him with a crossbow. But the idea of him, helpless beneath her, growing hard and eager…  

It’s definitely a concept.

Rey sighs, and gives up on trying to find the coaster-bookmark she’d been using. The book’s pages have been dogeared before, so she has no qualms about folding over her own place so she can set the book aside. She’s going to need two hands for this, if her fantasies are any indication.  

She closes her eyes, and listens to the fire, the occasional snapping and popping in the hearth as the logs settle and shift. Slowly, teasingly, she caresses the bare skin of her belly and hips, where her pajamas have ridden up, and down. Ben, in fearsome leather armor, stripped away and vulnerable, blood-smeared and—

No, not helpless. Rey’s hand slides down, two fingers parting her slick, swollen folds as she lets the fantasy take hold. In it, Ben rises from the bed, pinning her down with his body, taking what he wants from her. The pleasure hits her, sharp and fierce and sudden, and Rey has to bite her lip to keep from making any sound at all. Who the hell knows how deeply the rest of the cabin’s occupants sleep? Han and Leia won’t hear her, but… if Ben does, if he came out and saw her, if he _caught_ her, he’d have to punish her—

With a soft gasp, Rey comes.

A residual, languid softness fills her body, turning her bones to jelly. Rey closes her eyes, smiling softly. _What’s the harm in a little fantasy?_ she thinks, as she begins to drift off to sleep. It doesn’t mean anything.

* * *

The couch is shit.

Rey sleeps fitfully, moving from one side to the other, growing increasingly desperate for a comfortable spot. Then, when the fire dies down, Rey shivers as she dozes, until, sometime just before dawn, she wakes to a cramp in her neck and an ache in her lower back, and she opens her eyes to a vaguely Ben-shaped blur, standing in the kitchen.

Rey looks at him as her eyes focus in the darkness.

He’s making coffee.

And Rey is tired of pretending to sleep, so she gets up, draping a quilt around her shoulders and shuffling towards the kitchen.

In his green plaid pajama pants and yesterday’s henley, Ben seems to be lost in thought as she approaches him. His hair is in a bit of a disarray, but in a rumpled sort of way that might be intentional, or might be accidental. She’s a few steps behind him when he notices her approach, and he gives her an equally bleary look and a low “G‘morning.”

“Morning,” Rey replies, heading to the cabinet and pulling down a mug of her own. She chooses one with a cartoon black bear wearing a mining helmet, emblazoned with the words ‘Ursa Miner’ and sets it down by Ben’s choice of mug, which has a similar cartoon bear shrugging and saying ‘Bear With Me: I’m Not a Morning Person.’

“Sorry if I woke you up,” he says, voice faintly husky.

Rey shakes her head. “It’s fine. I was awake.”

Ben gives her a look as if he can tell that she’s lying, but doesn’t say anything. With a few button presses, the coffee maker whirs into alertness.

Rey glances at the clock on the stove. It’s just before seven in the morning—an ungodly hour to be awake, but there’s really nothing for it. She shuffles to the other side of the kitchen, still wrapped up in her quilts. She’s not trying to stare at him, but he’s really the only interesting thing in the room; she shouldn’t allow herself to file away the knowledge of what he looks and sounds like in the mornings; that isn’t what this is—domestic bliss isn’t for her, or for them. So, instead, she makes her way over to the window on the other side of the dining table. Outside, in the pale, early light of morning, the world is frosted in white.

It’s still and quiet—quite pretty, really. Rey, a city girl through and through, has never really been out in the middle of this much nature, this deeply into nowhere. It’s unsettling, but in a good sort of way. Rey can’t really explain it. There’s something peaceful and profound about it.

Behind her, Ben is still keeping his distance. Rey wraps the blanket a little higher around her shoulders. Peaceful, profound, and cold as hell.

As if answering her unspoken thoughts, Ben says, softly: “I’ll get a fire going.”

Rey glances back over her shoulder at him. “I can do it.”

“Let me,” is all he says.

And Rey nods.

But before he can move, both of them glance upwards at the sound of a low, masculine, and distinct laugh. There’s no rhythmic thumping, but…

Rey blushes, and catches Ben’s eyes.

“Christ save me from hearing my parents have sex,” Ben mutters.

“Aren’t you... Jewish?” Rey replies, turning away from the window and walking past him, to the fridge.

“Depends on who you ask,” he says, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the kitchen counter. “And where you check.”

Rey pretends to be suddenly interested in finding the creamer. Her naughty fantasy from last night springs back into alertness like an inflatable raft in a Cialis commercial.

The timer on the coffee maker goes off—and so, from the sound of it, does Han, upstairs—and Ben pulls the carafe out of the coffeemaker a bit too forcefully, very nearly splashing his own mug full, and then Rey’s, as the last drips of the brew sizzle on the bare plate below. Rey understands. She puts a bit of creamer in her mug, more to cool it down than for the taste, and follows Ben as he very nearly runs out of the kitchen, as far away from the sound of his parents as he possibly can get.

“Why the hell didn’t I bring headphones…”

Rey has to laugh. Thankfully, over in the living room, the sound is muffled by the wind outside. Ben puts his coffee down on the hearth and gets to work on the fireplace, sweeping out the old ashes into the tray, inspecting and arranging the logs and layering them into a complex tower structure with new kindling.

Rey sits down in the chair—having spent the night on the couch of nightmares, she isn’t enthuses about sitting there at all—and watches him work. Slowly, the fire takes, and the warmth begins to reach her. She keeps the blanket on, though, and cradles her mug of coffee in her hands to warm them a bit faster.

At length, satisfied with his work and bereft of logs to poke, Ben sits down on the couch with his coffee, wincing as he settles in. He looks over at Rey.

“This couch is awful.”

Rey laughs. “It really is.”

He frowns. “You’re taking the bed tonight; I’ll take the couch.”

Rey resists the urge to roll her eyes. “Honestly, I—”

“No,” he says. “Why won’t you let me do this for you?”

“Because it’s…” she searches for the right words. “It’s not that big of a deal. And you’re doing it to make a point about what you want, not about what I want.”

“So, if all things were equal, you’re telling me you’d seriously choose this shitty couch over a soft, very comfortable bed?”

“Well now you’re just rubbing it in,” Rey says, a smile forming on the edge of her lips. “How comfortable is it? Do go on.”

“It’s very comfortable,” Ben says—and his voice drops an octave, the very sound of temptation and sin. “I just sink right in.”

“Good for you,” Rey says, her face growing a little warm. “I bet you slept like a baby.”

“Something like that.”

Rey takes a drink of her coffee; it’s still too hot, and she winces a little.

“I know what your problem is,” Ben declares.

“Oh?” Rey says. “Enlighten me.”

“You’re a _brat_.”

Somehow, Rey manages to not sputter a crude response to this through her coffee. Instead, she raises her brows in what she hopes is amusement. “And what is _that_ supposed to mean?”

Ben opens his mouth to respond, but his parents’ door upstairs opens with a creak, and both of them look over to the stairs.

“Morning, you two,” Han says, coming down to the landing, wearing jeans, socks, and a warm-looking gray flannel under a navy blue puffer vest. “Your mom and I are gonna head on down to town, see if we can get a better signal so she can check her work email.”

“Surprise, surprise,” Ben says, rolling his eyes this time. “Can’t stop working, even on—”

“And we’ll get some groceries,” Leia says, glaring at her son. “Unless you want to come with us.”

“I… no, thank you,” Rey says. It isn’t that she particularly wants to stay with Ben, she just doesn’t want to get up and put on clothing that isn’t pajamas.

Han and Leia get their boots and coats on, and, after taking a look through the fridge and pantry, make a list—with some amount of contentious discussion—and eventually head out to the car. In the silence that follows, Ben sits, and Rey half-heartedly reads, but can’t get into the story.

After a few more minutes of this, Ben gets up.

“I’m making us breakfast.”

Rey, on instinct, opens her mouth to protest. But his words from earlier echo in her ears… Just to spite him, she settles back down with her book, and lets him cook for her without a complaint.

 

 

 

> _Sister Éliane ducked back behind the stout oaken door, catching her breath, searching for a moment’s peace which she knew she could not find—not as long as that man was here in their convent! He had said that she was powerful, but… all she knew were the simple magic tricks, to keep a patient still as she worked on them. That was no great thing, even if the other Sisters sometimes looked askance at her. They were ultimately grateful that they could do their work. When this dark traveller had fallen to his knees before her in the forest, Éliane had known that it was her duty to help him, even if her fear and trepidation threatened to overwhelm her. It was only when she had rolled him over, onto the makeshift stretcher she had fashioned out of two fallen branches and a length of spare rope, that Éliane had seen the sigil worked into his soot-blackened surcote._
> 
> _The blood-red mark of the Etrothen Empire. Their most hated foe._
> 
> _Sister Éliane had known what he was, even if she had only suspected who he was… Now, as she stretched out her senses and tested the bonds which restrained her sleeping patient, she felt a shaky sense of foreboding and disquiet. She had never met one like her—one who could touch the same invisible currents as she could, one who—_

“Do you want cheese on your eggs?” Ben asks.

Rey looks up. “Oh, um. Sure.”

Ben, standing in the kitchen, turns slightly to give her a look. “Hm?”

“Yes, _please,_ ” Rey says, and narrows her eyes at him. “And I do _not_ argue with you about everything.”

“You don’t?”

“ _No,_ I—” Rey snaps her mouth closed, watching with fire in her veins as Ben smiles innocently, and turns back to the stove.

Could she, hypothetically, take a burning log out of the fireplace and hit him with it from here? Rey considers, then tamps down this outrageous impulse, focusing back on the story.

 

 

 

> _Her patient would be waking soon, Éliane thought. Already he was stirring back to consciousness, struggling against—_

“Bacon or sausage?” Ben asks. “Or both?”

“There’s bacon?”

“Turkey bacon,” he amends, holding the packet up. “Which hardly counts…”

“Either is fine,” Rey says. Then, quietly, she adds: “Thank you.”

Ben has no snarky reply to this.

Quietly, Rey wonders just who exactly was training whom, here. She looks back down at her book, but is too distracted to pick up the story. Instead, she stands, leaving the blanket on the chair and walking past the fire to look out the living room’s windows. The morning has been peaceful, but Rey is surprised to see how much the wind had picked up. Snow is falling already, another thick layer of white blanketing the trees and concealing any trace of where Han and Leia’s car has gone.

“Do you think they’ll be able to get back?" Rey asks, when Ben comes over to her, holding a pair of plates and offering one to her.

He glances out the window, and shrugs. “Maybe. It could pass.”

Rey takes the plate from him, and feels her stomach growl in loud appreciation at the pile of fluffy, perfect, cheesy eggs and the row of sausages beside it. There’s toast, too—buttered and golden brown. She notices, with a quiet sort of appreciation, that he’s piled their plates as evenly as possible. No meager portions for her, just because she’s a girl. It’s… thoughtful, she supposes.

Or just practical.

This is Ben Solo we’re talking about, after all.

And he hates her, so…

Rey sits back down at her chair, and covers her legs with the blanket. In silence, they eat.

But outside, the storm doesn’t subside at all. In fact, if anything, it seems like the wind has picked up even further, and the snow has shifted, battering the window with intermittent pellets of ice.

“I hope your parents aren’t trying to drive back in this,” Rey says, noticing the darkening sky.

“Yeah,” Ben says. “They probably stayed in town…”

“I hope so.”

Ben looks over at her, catching sight of her concern. “Hey, they’ll be okay.”

_Why do you care?_

Rey bites back her flippant reply. Maybe she is learning—or maybe there’s concern in his dark eyes as well. For all that he fights with his family, he has to know that they love him. And he has to know that Rey would’ve given anything to be loved like that by her own family. Borrowing his is nice, but… it’s like borrowing a boyfriend’s sweater long past a breakup, knowing that he wants it back.

It doesn’t belong to her.

Rey breaks the moment first, looking down at their empty plates. “I’ll wash these—”

“Let me,” he says, and takes them from her before she can protest. “And if the storm keeps up, we might lose power. I’ll go out and check on the generator in a bit, just in case.”

* * *

_Let me._

Rey hears the echo of those words reverberating through her thoughts the whole rest of the morning. When he takes her dishes to the sink, and washes them. When he puts on his winter coat and his boots, and goes out, tromping around in the worsening storm, to check on the generator and the water tank. And when he comes back in, snow flurries in his hair, looking windblown and kissable, and—

Where has that thought come from?

_Let me._

She could just let him, she thinks. If he tugged her up against him and kissed her, his cheeks would be cold, from the wind, but his mouth would be hot, she just knows it would be.

Instead, he tells her things look alright, for now, and scrapes the snow off of his boots on the porch, coming back inside in stocking feet, shaking the snow out of his hair.

_Let me._

It frightens her, how much she wants to just give in and let him do what he wants. How easily he needles at her, how swiftly he finds the tender places to poke and prod and provoke a reaction. Like he wants her to fight him properly, so he can unleash whatever it is that’s pent up within him.

As the storm grows fiercer and more wild, Rey holds her book in her lap, reading the same page over and over. Not comprehending a word of it. Lunchtime comes and goes and she isn’t hungry, because nerves have taken over. Ben half-heartedly asks her if she wants to play a game of cards, or pull out one of the board games, but she shakes her head. Certain that, if they did, they’d either end up beating each other to death with a monopoly board, or she’d end up—

“Rey?”

She does jump at this, his serious, cautious voice.

“What?”

“Are you okay?”

Rey nods, but they both know it’s a bit too hasty to be honest. “Yes, it’s just…”

“There’s a B&B in town, I’m sure they’ve—”

“It’s not—” Rey says, and then amends: “That’s good.”

His dark eyes hold hers.

_Let me._

Rey shivers.

Surrender is frightening. Even acknowledging what she wants, what she craves—what she desires… it makes her heart pound, her pulse race.

She’s a fool.

Ben, who has been working at a sketchbook, drawing who knows what on the uncomfortable couch, looks away. Outside, an early night has fallen; the storm clouds block out any of the tentative winter light.

Neither one wants to be the one to say it, but… they both know. They’re officially snowed in.

* * *

Rey doesn’t understand where her sense of dread is coming from. She just knows that it hangs over her, as ominous and heavy as the storm clouds outside. At one point, Ben gets up to put another log on the fire, and he brushes close to her, and Rey imagines that the next time he leaves on one of his photo assignments, he doesn’t ever come back. What would she say to him, here and now, if she knew that was the case?

She doesn’t know.

Filled with this strange nervous energy, Rey gets up as well, ostensibly to warm herself by the fire. It’s impossible to work up the courage to say things that she can’t find the words to express.

But before she can think, there’s a vicious, howling gust, and a groan that reverberates beneath the foundations of the cabin—and then a crash, and then Ben is on top of her, and Rey is screaming as snow and ice and splinters rain down upon them. He’s knocked her to the floor, caged her in with his body, and she can see past his mane of hair that there’s a fucking tree through the middle of the roof that definitely wasn’t there a minute ago.

“Holy shit,” Rey breathes.

“Are you okay?”

Adrenaline is racing through her body in little aftershocks. She’d wanted him on top of her, but fuck, not like this. She shakes in his arms, and can’t stop.

“Rey, are you okay?”

“Yes,” she says, looking back at his face, and not the gash in the ceiling. “I’m fine.”

“I…” he looks dazed a little as well, staying right there above her, like he doesn’t know how to move. “I’m… stay here.”

“What?”

“Just stay right here,” he repeats, standing up on slightly shaky legs.

Rey can see better, now, how much damage the tree has done to the roof. It’s fallen basically straight into the upstairs bedroom and loft, crunching through the central beam at the point of the roofline, branches hanging down and scattering pine needles and flakes of snow through the gash it’s made. Rey feels a distinct sense of sorrow at this, now that the fear has begun to ebb away; this had been his grandmother’s place of refuge, kept almost in memorial to her, and now it’s ruined…

Ben takes a few careful steps around one of the fallen branches, looking up into the sky. Then he glances over at the hearth, and Rey follows his gaze, sitting up a little. The top of the fireplace, sturdy stones built straight to the peak of the wall, had been what ultimately had stopped the massive tree from slicing the cabin in two.

“The back bedroom should be safe,” Ben says to her. “The way it fell, you should—”

“I’m not going anywhere!”

Ben looks at her—really looks. Then, he nods. “Okay.”

* * *

They get their gear on—Rey, pulling on her long underwear and jeans while Ben checks out the back bathroom, then making her way gingerly over to the coat rack. They get ready to go out, mutually pretending that it’ll make a difference, but Rey can hardly see anything in the blinding white. She can barely see Ben as he trudges beside her in the waist-high snow. They make it halfway to the generator before deciding to turn back.

There’s no point.

They get back inside, and Rey notices that already, the couch and chairs and floor are dusted with white. Even the kitchen is dusted in it, and the wind comes swirling in overhead. She takes off her jacket and her boots, out of habit, but when she hangs up her coat, she can’t stop shivering.

“We’re going to need to get a fire going in the back,” Ben says, and Rey nods. The back bedroom—now the _only_ bedroom, with the only bed, and the only fireplace that isn’t holding up a tree that could come crashing down on them both at any moment.

“I’ll get the firewood,” Rey says, a challenge. “Not without you.”

Ben nods. With his coat still on, he heads over to the couch.

* * *

Rey brings all the firewood she can carry back to the bedroom, and piles it up beside the smaller but still sufficient fireplace there as neatly as she can.

A few minutes later, Ben comes in, carrying blankets from the couch as well as her bag. He sets her book down on the bed, and Rey looks up, offering him a quiet word of thanks. As he spreads the extra blankets out on the bed— _don’t think about the bed, Rey, you can cross that bed…_ **_Bridge!_ ** _when you come to it_ —Rey digs in her bag and pulls out her crappy old cell phone, reading through the broken screen that it’s, startlingly, only three-something in the afternoon. The quality of light outside makes her feel like it’s nighttime, and her residual fear and dread has now solidified in her gut as something like a bone-deep weariness, as if they’ve been stranded up here for years, not hours.

“The storm will pass, eventually,” Ben says, digging out a box of candles from the pile and setting a lighter down beside them. “And there’s food in the fridge; we won’t have to worry about it getting warm, at least.”

“Just cooking it,” Rey says. “Although I bet we could use the fire…”

Ben grunts his affirmative response to this, attempting to work a candle into a little holder. “This will work for light, tonight… if you have to use the bathroom, or… if you want to read.”

“It’s really not that good of a book,” Rey says.

He glances up at her, a quirk of amusement on his mouth. “Then why are you reading it?”

Rey sighs, and shrugs. “Something to pass the time. And I didn’t see _Pride and Prejudice,_ so…”

He doesn’t say anything to this. Rey doesn’t know if she’s set the bar so low that ‘not making a snarky comment about romance novels or so-called chick-lit’ is a plus for him or not.

There’s really nothing they can do but wait it out. No signal on her phone, nobody but Han and Leia who know they’re up here…

Ben comes over and lights the fire in the hearth, a welcome disruption from her morbid thoughts. Rey moves to the side, and tries not to think too much about the size of his hands, how easily and carefully he builds the fire for her. He could ask her to get on all fours for him, right here on the rug, and she would.

He doesn’t.

He doesn’t say a word.

So Rey sits before the fire, thinking. Not reading. Avoiding the inevitable. But eventually, night falls. It’s too dark to read, too dark to draw.

The bed, so long ignored, cannot be avoided any longer.

* * *

Rey strips down hastily, taking off her bra and underwear, pulling on her tight-fitting long underwear leggings and long-sleeved, crew-neck shirt; shivering a little as she stands before the hearth, she ponders putting on a sweatshirt as well. Then the door to the bathroom opens, and Ben steps out, carrying his little candle in one massive hand, catching sight of her almost immediately.

“Y—” she stutters, hoping she could pass it off as a shiver. “You’re not wearing a shirt.”

Ben looks down at his bare chest as if he, too, has just become aware of the same fact. Lit by the candle, the expanse of his torso seems to be pale bronze, entirely too much torso for one human male to possess. He’s wide, and well-formed, not overstuffed like some bodybuilder, but… well fit. Rey swallows thickly.

“I can… I could put on a shirt, if you—”

“It’s fine!” Rey squeaks.

“—I just sleep hot,” Ben finishes.

 _When are you_ **_not_ ** _hot,_ Rey’s thoughts taunt her; she forces a casual smile to her face.

“It’s fine. I’m always cold, so…”

Her voice trails off as his eyes sweep up and down her form. The silk long underwear had been a gift—from Leia, actually. It’s pale peach, very soft and nice, and it skims her form the way a base-layer ought to. But the way he is staring at her makes Rey suddenly wonder if it was a bit more transparent or revealing than she had assumed. She glances down, and blushes instantly as she catches sight of her own peaked nipples, pointing through the silk. Hastily, she crosses her arms over them, and clears her throat.

When she looks up, Ben has set the candle down on the bedside table and is turning back the quilts. Not looking at her at all.

She takes two steps away from the fireplace, and goes to her side of the bed to do the same. It’s a queen-sized bed, plenty big enough for her, but as she and Ben slide under the covers, it's immediately obvious it is not the right size for Ben, and Ben alone—never mind a second occupant.

He rolls to his side, away from her, and Rey shivers as the veritable mountain of his form makes an echoing cavern of blankets down the side. He rolls to his back, and Rey tries laying on her side, facing away from him, but he grumbles and tells her she’s hogging all the blankets.

“I can’t help it that you’re seven feet tall and built like—”

“I’m six-three,” Ben cuts across her indignantly. “I’m not—”

“We could divide the quilts up into two piles, and then _you’d_ get some, and _I’d_ get some—”

 _Oh gosh,_ Rey thinks: _I wish I_ **_could_ ** _get some—_

Ben gives her an exasperated sigh. “Just come here, already.”

Rey’s words dissolve into a very undignified _meep_ as he rolls to his side and presses the entirety of his warm, solid body along her back.

Oh.

_Oh._

Her arguments die in her throat. Her thoughts scatter like snow, swirling in a storm. And her body gives one long, rolling shiver which has nothing whatsoever to do with the cold.

She _definitely_ isn’t cold anymore.

Ben slips his right arm underneath her pillow, and gently puts his left arm along the line of his own body; she can feel it there, close enough to touch, so close that he could’ve reached over and held her—but instead, she can tell he’s keeping himself still on purpose. Distant.

 _Appropriate_ , Rey amends. It isn’t like she _wants_ him to hold her. They are just making the best of a bad situation.

“Go to sleep, Rey,” Ben murmurs into her hair, his breath ghosting over the bare strip of skin at the collar of her shirt.

He doesn’t shift against her. Doesn’t even move.

“Good night,” Rey replies, after a few long, weighty moments have passed.

He doesn’t respond.

But he isn’t asleep—Rey can just tell.

Well, fine. If this is the way things were going to go, then Rey isn’t going to rock the boat. She isn’t going to even try. So she lays there, in the darkness, with a warm, solid, unyielding body behind her, a pile of quilts and blankets atop her, and a growing sense of dread—no, that wasn’t right, it was something else, some other, unnameable, complicated tangle of emotions—inside of her.

Which isn’t what she really wanted inside of her, but… shut up, brain. Not helpful.

Rey is positive that she’ll be getting no sleep whatsoever under these conditions, but within moments, she is out like a light.

* * *

In dreams, things sometimes become clearer. Times when the subconscious peels back all pretense and just tells it like it is. Dreams with easy interpretations.

There are times when dreams truly do knit the raveled sleeve of care—processing through the day’s events, letting go of worries and fears.

Then, there are the weird-as-fuck dreams.

Rey is pretty sure she’s in the middle of one of those when she jolts awake.

The wind outside—just the storm. Whatever it was her brain had translated that sound into, Rey doesn’t chase it back down to try to examine it. Something about a ruin, and chains, binding her middle… something prodding her forward. She hears something metallic distantly flapping in the wind—a piece of the damaged roof, she guesses.

Rey catches her breath, her heart racing as the last traces of the dream fade.

“Rey?”

From behind her—quite close behind her—Ben’s worried, sleep-roughened voice murmurs.

“I’m fine,” she says. Or rather, starts to say, because a moment later, when he doesn’t respond, Rey realizes he’s still sleeping.

Then she realizes… the iron band, tight across her middle? Ben’s arm, which has drifted across her body in the night. His hand has pushed the hem of her shirt up, and she’s sweating beneath it, from his touch and from his nearness.

She wakes up further, gains just that crucial fragment of awareness to realize that… that thing, prodding her forward?

Yeah.

“Ben?” Rey tries again. He isn’t interested in her, despite her fierce and long-standing crush, basically since the moment they’ve met, he’s been clear as daylight that he isn’t at all interested in her that way. And yet his body is interested. Well, parts of his body are interested, anyway. His hands seem to be interested. His dick is definitely interested—and Rey is blushing even hotter now, both from arousal and shame.

He doesn’t want her. She shouldn’t let him grind against her in his sleep, because it… it isn’t what he wants.

“Ben?”

“Hmmph?” He wakes slowly, like he’s coming out of hibernation, and—oh Christ, his reaction is to hold her closer, not push her away. He noses at the back of her neck, breathes in a deep breath of her hair, wraps his arms around her and actually thrusts his hips against her ass, grinding that frankly inexcusably large erection against her.

Rey presses her eyes and her thighs tightly closed, and indulges in it for one precious second, before doing what must be done.

“Ben!”

At her sharp tone, he jolts—fully awake now, and she can tell by the way he basically shoves her away from him. Rey yelps and nearly falls off the bed, rolling to her back and glaring over at him. Outside, there’s just enough cold morning light to see his profile.

He looks absolutely mortified.

“I’m—”

“It’s fine,” she says hastily, nervous hands adjusting the quilts to cover her barely-exposed right thigh. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Ben practically growls, lifting his left hand to cover his eyes. “Fucking hell…”

“It’s a natural biological response—” Rey says. “If you need to take care of it, that’s fine.”

He lowers his hand and turns to look at her, expression incredulous. “Are you seriously asking me to go jack off right now?”

“No!” It comes out much higher-pitched than Rey intends. “I’m not asking you to—I’m saying you _can_ , if you need to—”

“ _Unbelievable_.”

“It’s fine, we’re both adults...”

“I’m ten years older than you—”

“So what?” Rey counters. “And that means you stop wanking when you turn thirty?”

Ben makes another exasperated growl—fuck, Rey thinks, why is that so sexy, it’s unfair, completely and totally unfair—and wipes at his face again.

“It’s nothing, Rey.”

“Didn’t feel like nothing…” The words come out of her mouth before she can stop them. “And anyway, you were saying my name in your sleep, so…”

At this, he goes very, very quiet. Rey takes a breath, and then another one, and then another. This is painfully awkward—although not nearly as painful as how hard his dick felt, she amends. Despite her desperately confused arousal, she shivers.

A second later, Ben pushes back the quilts, startling her into silence as he moves as if to put his feet on the floor. Then, as if remembering that he’s probably still hard enough to hammer nails, he flips the blankets back over his legs, still staring up at the ceiling. Laying very still.

Devoid of his warmth, Rey finds that the blankets don’t make much of a difference. The fire has gone out in the hearth. And she misses him, misses the way he had been holding her—which, yet again she is forced to remind herself, he’d been doing in his sleep.

It wasn’t as if he really wanted her. She’d just been there, like a pillow or… like someone else, maybe. Maybe she’d been a memory in his dreams, as he’d been a frightened captive in hers.

“I’ll close my eyes,” Rey says, softly. “You can… do it. If you need to.”

“Rey, I am not jacking off in bed next to you.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” Ben flounders. “It’s… disrespectful.”

“How is it—”

“You can’t seriously tell me that all you wanted for Christmas was to wake up next to a man jacking off in bed while the power is out.”

“No,” Rey says, slowly.

“So that’s—”

“Not while the power is out, anyway.”

“Rey.” Her name is a warning in his mouth; she ignores it.

Rey feels her face flush, despite the chill of the room. She can’t—doesn’t dare look over at him when she confesses. But—

“And not any man,” she says, trying for a breezy tone and almost, almost achieving it. “I mean, if it was a random guy that just showed up to pull one off, sure, but… it’s you.”

She can hear it when he moves. When he turns his head, and looks over at her. She can practically feel it, his laser-like gaze.

“Rey…”

She turns a little, rolling to her side, rolling closer; her eyes trail up from the quilts atop them to his face, finally meeting his.

“Don’t tease me, Rey.”

A shock of cold anguish shudders through her. “I’m… I’m not teasing you…”

“Because you… you…”

“You have to have noticed how I… how I feel, about you,” Rey says. There’s no lightness to her tone now. No humor at all. “And it’s fine, you don’t… I don’t—I never expected...”

She swallows, mouth gone suddenly dry.

“If I don’t what?”

“If you don’t feel the same.”

Rey closes her eyes, willing the universe to just go ahead and send another tree down, right on top of her. This is how it ends, then: Laying in bed with a man who she’s wanted, craved, fantasized about from the first moment they’ve met, feeling the cold sting of rejection after baring her deepest feelings to him. If an evergreen could just end it all, right about now, that’d be great.

Ben doesn’t reply. Instead, she feels the bed move a little. Like he’s adjusting position. Rey panics; now that the words are out, she can’t take them back. How can she dig herself out of this?

“Ben, I—”

The movement of the bed is suspiciously… rhythmic.

Her eyes fly open. Ben is looking right at her, and below the quilts, he’s moving his hand.

Whatever it was she was going to say vaporizes in her brain.

“Is this what you wanted?”

Rey can’t speak.

“Rey, tell me,” he softly demands. “Is this what you wanted? You wanted me to touch myself like this?”

The bed is still moving. He’s… he’s jacking off, and Rey can’t think, because her brain waves have been replaced with a faint buzzing noise.

“I could stop, if you don’t like—”

“No! No, y-you can—”

He stops; Rey can feel the bed stop moving, see in her peripheral vision—she’s not looking, but she’s not _not_ looking, because how can she not look—that the motion of his hand beneath the covers has stilled. Rey presses her own thighs together, as if he’d stopped touching her, and not himself; she’s wet, so wet that the delicately-knit silk fabric is clinging to her folds.

“Tell me what you want, Rey.”

God, she wants so many things. A million things.

But she’ll start with one.

“Keep going,” Rey says. “Please, Ben… I want… I want you to keep going.”

He does. The movement starts back up again. His dark eyes are still locked on hers.

“You like this, making me come for you?”

“Yes.” Rey can do nothing but answer honestly.

“And you think it’s nice, that I have to do this for myself?” Ben says, his pace increasing slightly. “You think it’s good, the way you walk around, teasing me like you do?”

“I don’t tease you—”

“Bullshit.”

Rey closes her mouth; she knows she’s caught in a lie, a lie so deep that she’s been telling it to herself, as well as to him.

He’s waiting for her to respond, the bed moving, slowly and deliberately, with each of his slow strokes.

“I’ll… be good, Ben,” Rey whispers. “I didn’t mean to tease—”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Please,” she says—without thinking, without planning. They’re bundled up together in this tiny queen bed, and the frame is moving, and his hand is moving, and she hasn’t even touched herself yet, but she’s halfway there just imagining what’s happening beneath these quilts. Her hand creeps down, across her thigh, not even underneath the waistband of her long johns, just barely edging along the border of where she’s made it so very damp—and again, Ben stops. He props himself up on his arm, and the quilts fall back to reveal more of his bare chest.

This time, he glares at her. “No.”

“N-no?” Rey’s hand stills but she doesn’t move it away; how in the hell can he see beneath the quilts? See what she’s doing?

“No,” he repeats. “You’ve been teasing me. You don’t get to come until I say you do.”

_Oh shit._

His gaze is steady, pupils blown so wide it makes his eyes look black, not the usual warm amber she knows and adores. Rey stills, then, like an animal, trembling in the sight of a stronger, faster predator. She could slap him, she thinks. Take her hand out from between her legs and slap him, and tell him he can sleep under an avalanche, for all she cares.

She doesn’t.

“Rey?” Ben’s voice is a little softer, his gaze warming up just a bit.

“Yes,” she says.

And she slowly withdraws her hand from between her thighs, placing it atop the quilt for him to see. Something inside of her—that animal, that wild thing, the creature that wants more than thinks—lays down in contented anticipation. Surrender.

A muscle in his jaw clenches. He looks at her hand, palm down on the patchwork. He looks into her eyes, seeking confirmation, understanding. Permission.

Slowly, he nods.

“Good girl.”

She should hate the way he says it—like she’s his pet, something he owns. The sound of it rings in her ears like an echo of a distant bell, placating her, making her want to purr in contentment at his praise.

_What is she doing?_

Whatever he damn well tells her to, that’s what.

“Rey…” he says, but it’s not a prelude to anything—not a request, not a loving endearment. Just an assertion that she’s here, now, watching as he brings himself off. He speeds up, head tilting back, breath coming in harsh exhalations.

Rey watches. It feels illicit, voyeuristic—satisfying, because now she _knows_ , and yet unsatisfying, because she can’t do anything but watch.

He comes. Rey feels her heart pounding as the pleasure plays out across his features, as if she’s just come as well: His eyes close tight, his mouth parts, throat working—

It’s not fair. It’s just not fair.

She knows what he looks like, soft and lazy and rough-voiced in the mornings. She knows what he looks like, bare-chested and in her bed. She knows, now, what he sounds like when he comes—how vocal he is, how unashamed, how absolutely primal, and yet she still can’t touch him. He hasn’t given her permission yet, and Rey wouldn’t break this moment for the world—or for a rescue helicopter, which she also hopes doesn’t show up right at this moment. She wants to be stuck beside him, live and die next to him, in this very bed, snowed-in and wasting away until he tells her she can move, or eat, or fucking breathe.

They’re doing this all backwards. A twisted thing,

His head is still thrown back, mouth open as the rough growl fades away with each exhale of shaky breath. The bed shakes, too, like he’s giving a few last rough, punishing pulls on his cock. Rey presses her thighs together, needy and aching and feeling more empty than she’s ever felt before. Except—he’s just come, and they…

“I should make you clean me up with your mouth,” Ben says, rolling his head to the side, sated and yet still predatory. “But I don’t think you’ve earned that yet, either.”

Rey doesn’t know what the hell to say to this; she ought to be revolted, but shockingly isn’t.

“Now, at least, I can think properly,” he continues, ever watchful. “What am I going to do with you?”

If she’d been dreaming of a quick fuck, she’d sorely misjudged the situation—and the tension between them. With any other partner, Rey would’ve put a stop to… whatever this is. Asserted herself, taken control.

But it feels so good to let him decide what’s going to happen next. It feels like she doesn’t have to think anymore.

Enough considering; Ben turns, and wrenches the blankets off the bed, tossing them to the floor in a pile. Instinctively, Rey’s reaction is to get smaller—to hide. And the moment she does so, it’s like Ben snaps out of whatever has possessed him. He straightens up, looking down at her with genuine concern in his expression.

“Rey… is this… tell me to stop, if you—”

“No,” Rey says, emphatically. “No, please don’t stop.”

She only gets a glimpse of his cock—spent, but still half-hard and huge. How can they… what she wants from him, she’s going to have to wait some long, torturous minutes, at least, before they can go right to it. But, damn it, she’s willing to be bold. It’s so warm in the room, and from the heat of his eyes, that she reaches for the hem of her shirt, starting to tug it up and off.

“No.”

Ben’s quiet command stills her movements. Slowly, she lowers the hem of the shirt back down over her breasts, and looks up at him.

“Keep it on.” He swallows, thickly, and gives her a little nod, the tilt of his head almost aristocratic as he keeps his eyes fixed on her. “Lie back on the bed. Spread your legs.”

Rey does it. She doesn’t even have to think about why she’s so eager to have him tell her what to do—and doesn’t even grapple with her instinctive response, her bitten-back retort: _Okay, Mr. Modest-is-Hottest, what the hell do you have planned with me that involves keeping my clothes on?_

Ben tugs his own pajama bottoms off, though, and crawls onto the bed. He looks up at her, seeming to be satisfied that she’s laying there like he commanded, and settles himself between her spread legs.

“Keep your hands on the headboard, Rey,” he murmurs.

And she does. Her hands fly up, wrapping around two of the turned wooden bars that forms the old-fashioned headboard of the bed. Her heart is racing in her chest.

 _Please,_ she thinks—but doesn’t dare beg. _Please, just pull my fucking leggings off—_

“Poor thing,” he hums, one hand cupping her mound, pressing the soaked fabric up against her skin and curls. “So wet. Is this all for me?”

“Yes,” Rey manages to answer.

The pressure is _good,_ but it’s not _enough,_ and she _needs—_

“Hmm,” is Ben’s only reply. He presses against her through the damp knit silk, touch somehow both amplified and dulled at the same time. Rey parts her mouth in a soft gasp, fighting the urge to beg. She won’t beg.

“I’ve wanted to get my face between your legs from the first moment I saw you,” he says quietly.

“I—I wanted that too—”

“But you were my father’s student, and I—”

“I didn’t—”

Her words cut off as his big hands draws back from her body, giving her swollen folds a solid, but not painful smack. Rey’s hips cant up, chasing the strangeness of it, the pleasure. Her eyes snap to his, and he grants her only the barest moment of acknowledgement.

She doesn’t take her hands from the headboard.

“And you looked at me like… like you wanted to slap me, or fuck me, or both.”

“Yes.” Rey can’t deny it. It’s the truth.

Ben takes his big hand, rubbing it in a slow, easy circle. Soothing the faint sting of the strike.

“And now?” he asks. “What do you want?”

Rey wets her lips with her tongue, mouth gone dry. “I want… you. This.”

With a tilt of his head, a firm press of his hand, he questions her. Rey nods.

“Tell me,” he says. “Let go of the wood, and—and I’ll know, if you—I’ll stop—”

Her hands tighten on the headboard, a movement that’s subtle, but does not go unnoticed by him at all. She can see it in his eyes. How is it that he’s the one who’s naked, and yet she feels totally exposed, laid bare, more than she’s ever been with anyone before. More vulnerable. More cherished. Pliant, and eager, and needy—pinned down, like a willing butterfly, sacrificed to the velvet board of his touch, the frame of his arms, the glass of his eyes.

His, to do with as he pleases.

At last, her fear, and her mind, is quiet.

And she expects that he’ll do it then, he’ll tug the waistband of her leggings down now, and do something, but instead, he just gives her the kindest, cruelest smile, and leans over, nipping at her peaked nipples through the fabric, one hand still on her mound, the other planted flat on the bed for support.

The sensation is different, so different, his warm mouth eager through the cloth. She can feel, and yet not feel, the pressure of his tongue. It’s maddening, and erotic.

“I love your little tits,” Ben says, following up with gentle love-bites on each of her tight-budded nipples. “I fucking love them…”

“Oh god,” Rey cries, half-incoherent already, just from this, just from the pressure of his hand against her. “Please, please…”

His mouth travels lower, across her covered sternum, down to her belly, carefully, achingly avoiding any slip of bared skin where the shirt has been pushed up. He nestles his face down into the juncture of her thighs and just breathes her in, a low growl of a noise reverberating from his throat into her body, like he’s pouring himself into her, filling her with sound.

Rey can’t catch her breath.

It shouldn’t be so hot, the way he nuzzles at her clothed cunt. The way the fabric moves, wrong and yet so right, dulling her senses, making her hands clench so hard she fears she’s going to Hulk out and snap the spindles.

She doesn’t move her hands. Moving means he stops, and she doesn’t want that. She wants to come.

She tells him as much, and he acknowledges her by slowing down, nearly stopping, making her weep with need.

And he still hasn’t fucking touched her.

“I need… fingers, please!” Rey begs. “Inside, I need you inside—”

In response, he simply turns his head, and bites at the inside of her thigh. Rey keens, and feels it like a caress. He returns to his movements on her spread folds, unable to suckle on her clit, but adding friction to her body—pushing up against her entrance with what feels like his closed fist, but not inside.

Rey knows she's almost there, and before she realizes what she’s doing her hands are tangling in his hair, tugging him close—

“Fuck,” he says, and pulls back from her, immediately.

Her eyes go wide. Half-formed, frustrated pleasure crests, then flattens, as he rocks back on his heels on the bed. His eyes are wild and heated, searching her face; why does he look so fearful?

Then, she understands.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t… please, don’t stop.”

Ben’s chest is heaving as he catches his breath; his hand moves down to his cock, which he gives a few slow, easy pulls.

“You’re alright?”

She nods, swiftly and surely, and then, remembering his instruction, raises her hands to grip the spindles once more. The panic in his expression diminishes. This is new, something delicate, something fragile and beautiful.

And he’d listened. He’d set a boundary for her, and she’d acknowledged it, and even though it had been a mistake—one she isn’t likely to repeat—he’d stopped, just like he’d said he would. Rey sinks deeper into the space of surrender, eyes wide and watchful in the pale morning light.

Ben moves, then. He tugs the leggings down at last, doesn’t even have to tell her to lift her bottom a little, she does it like their minds are linked. But the anticipation of every move stops there. He doesn’t pull them farther than mid-thigh, and instead of spreading her legs and angling between them, he keeps her legs pressed together, and hoists them up so her body is bent at the waist, legs in the air.

“I’m going to take care of you, Rey, if you’ll let me.”

“I want that,” she says.

He nods, like he’s pleased with her answer, one arm wrapping around her trapped limbs as he moves them to one shoulder.. “I wanted to take my time with you… bend you over the bed, show you how much I want you… but I want to see it in your eyes, the first time I’m inside of you.

“I want that,” Rey repeats—what else can she say but the truth? 

They really should be having a sensible, adult conversation right now, about birth control (she's on the shot, but he doesn't know that) and safety (she's clean, but she doesn't know his status) but everything is way too fucking hazy at the moment. She's never been foolish like this, never wanted to be. 

He lines himself up with her. Legs pressed together, it makes her feel even tighter, makes him feel even more massive than he looks. And he’d looked every bit as proportional as Rey’d theorized over the past several years.

Her inner thighs are still so slick, the first slow thrust parts between them, slides up her cleft and rocks against her oversensitive clit, making Rey gasp and arch on the bed. Ben grunts a soft curse, withdraws, and tries again.

This time, the slow stretch of entry is an unmistakable bliss. He gives her a few pleasure-soaked moments to adjust to his size before he starts moving. And from there, it’s like the world washes away. Earlier, when Rey had stared out at the storm and marveled at the way the snow came down, making everything clean and new—that’s how it feels, now, to get fucked by Ben Solo. She doesn’t have to think, or perform, or focus on anything at all; he’s just there, inside her, above her, around her. Containing her, so she can let go, and fly apart.

Rey makes noises—gasps or moans or his name, it hardly matters. He fucks her through it, steadily, with no shame. She doesn’t feel ashamed at all, not degraded, not used. Free.

She feels free.

“Like that,” he’s saying, hips snapping sharply, making lewd, wet sounds against her bottom. “Like that, come for me, like that.”

If she lets go, he’ll stop—but she needs to touch her clit. She doesn’t come without it, hasn’t ever before—

“T-touch my—my clit, please, Ben!” Rey manages to string the words together, and before she even can finish the sentence his free hand delves between her legs, huge hand rough and imprecise but it’s enough, it’s more than enough, and he groans with appreciation as she comes on his cock, belly tightening, legs straightening as little as they can, the way he holds her.

It’s so good.

Rey hears him follow her over, the haze of pleasure and surrender dissipating slowly like fog in the morning. She lets go of the bed, then, hands cramping and painful as blood and sensation rushes back into them; Rey holds the pain close, like a badge well-earned. How strange, she thinks, when she looks up and watches his face contort with his own climax. How strange, how beautiful.

* * *

After, he pulls out of her, and kisses her knee through the silk, before lowering her legs down to the bed. He lays behind her, shameless and disheveled, both of them messy and ruined but not caring whatsoever. He takes both of her hands in one of his, rubbing at the marks from the spindle, murmuring endearments into her skin.

“So good,” he says. “So good for me, you’re so good.”

Rey smiles.

The storm—within and without—is, at last, silent.

* * *

_I thought you hated me._

_I thought you felt I'd taken your place._

_I hated you, before I knew you._

There's so many things Rey thinks of saying, so many conversations that they'll have, at some point. Not now. Instead, she just lets him hold her. It feels like a whole new space has opened, like her world is a video game, and a new area has just been unlocked. But she's not afraid to go there, not with him here beside her. 

“I always wanted you to stay…” Rey confesses, toying with the ends of his hair as they drowse together in bed, time slipping by them, an inconsequential thing. “I like your family well enough, but… I wanted _you_ to stay.”

“Work.”

Ben mutters the a one-word excuse, or perhaps, apology, into her hair. But then he pulls back a little, and Rey can practically feel his gaze on her skin.

“Would you ever want to come with me?”

“What?” Rey leans back, still held in his embrace, but… she can see his eyes now, the sincerity there. The vulnerability.

And it shocks her, how sweet it is that after everything they’ve done, all that they’ve confessed with their words as well as their bodies, that _this_ is what makes him so vulnerable.

“Come with me,” he says again, so softly it already feels like a promise. “On my next assignment… I can’t promise the conditions will be as nice as this, but—”

Rey laughs, and crawls up his frame a little further so she can kiss the surprise off of his mouth.

“Yes,” she says. “Alright. I suppose a little _more_ adventure never hurt anybody…”

* * *

Hours later, when search and rescue finds them, they make station history as the least grateful pair ever to be rescued in blizzard conditions. It takes some explaining, some grabbing of clothing and readying of gear, but then Ben and Rey are bundled in silver-foil blankets, into the back of the rescue vehicle, making their way down the snowed-in road.

Down at the Bed and Breakfast, Han and Leia rush to embrace them, fretting over them both unnecessarily, apologizing to Rey, pushing mugs of hot chocolate into their hands. Han tips a measure of something from a flask into both of them, and looks back and forth between them, like he knows what they aren’t sharing.

Ben and Rey look at each other, agreeing through eye contact only to say nothing.

That night, the separate accommodations the hotel has so graciously provided for them are unneeded. They wisely climb to Rey’s third-floor room, and fuck until they collapse from bliss and exhaustion. He bends her over the bed like he’d promised, spanks her and marks her and makes it altogether much more challenging to sit on the hard wooden chairs in the breakfast room the next morning. But Rey eats her omelette, and looks across the table at Ben with a secret sort of a smile. Each time she winces, she can see the faint flush on his ears, and can only guess at how hard he is, under the table.

He’s left her marks, little gifts to show he cares. Rey loves him for each and every one. And she cannot wait to find out what other pleasures he has in store for her—her good, kind, caring man, who would give her the world, if she asked for it. How she had misjudged him, she thinks. What a fool she was, that it took a tree and a snowstorm to be honest. 

His parents chat on, arguing about this or that, none the wiser.

 _All in all,_ Rey thinks, _not a bad winter vacation._


End file.
